


Adam Adamant's Resolve

by RoundBrainySpecs



Category: Adam Adamant Lives!
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2018-03-18 02:19:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3552371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoundBrainySpecs/pseuds/RoundBrainySpecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Adamant stands at the grave of the woman he loved, the woman persuaded by the silver-tongued lies of his arch-nemesis, The Face, to betray him, and makes a resolution or, perhaps, two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adam Adamant's Resolve

Adam Adamant laid the single red rose on Louise's fresh grave, his black cape whipping in the wind that drove the chill rain in icy bullets from the dark storm clouds above.

What few mourners there had been were gone, and he was alone.

He had never expected to see her again, the woman who had betrayed him, the woman he loved still. For her it had been sixty-six years since they had last met, for him but one, and though her betrayal was a wound that went deep and jagged, he would not fault her for it. It was The Face, the diabolical mastermind at the centre of a thousand plots and who hated Adam with the entirety of his black heart, who had undertaken Louise's downfall with a silken tongue that hid poison in his honeyed words in order draw Adam into a trap he could not escape and in that darkest hour wreck on him that deepest cruelty which was the knowledge of her betrayal. No, he would not fault her for it, nor ever hold bitterness in his heart. Never. There had been many men of greater will and understanding who had fallen to the silver tongue of The Face.

What sweet and empty promises The Face had made, Adam knew only slightly; he knew eternal youth had been one. The Face had enslaved her, whispering professions of love and yet, in his baseness, he only loved the artificial beauty of Louise and she came to believe she was nothing without her youthful figure. It was that promise of eternal love and beauty she had been clinging to when she desperately and trustingly injected the poisoned syringe into her arm to smooth away all the years and return her to youth.

Though she had refused to believe him, she had been just as beautiful to Adam at eighty-nine as she had been at twenty-three; the same vivacious spirit he had fallen in love with had still burned beneath the pale and wrinkled skin and all the lies The Face had enslaved her with. If only she could have seen what Adam had!

When Adam had carried her across the threshold of the dank cellar where she had met her demise at her own trusting hand, he had thought of a time lost in decades and yet not long gone in his mind where he had dreamed of the day he would carry her over their threshold as his wife.

His hand clenched over the handle of his sword cane, his face darkening. The Face had taken everything from him: his life, family, friends, his world... and had corrupted, then discarded Louise like a worn-out glove. The Face was a fiend and a blackguard of the vilest sort, a man who preyed upon the weak and the innocent, who sought to throw the world into burning chaos, who had no concept of honour in one bone of his body. Upon his faith and honour, Adam would put an end to The Face and all his vile machinations if it took his very death to do so. Adam Adamant's dark resolve was set and as unbreakable as the stone for which his ancestor had been given the surname of 'Adamant.'

"Mr. Adamant!"

Adam turned to see a boyish figure - restraining her usual jubilant dynamism to a bouncy walk – walking briskly across the grey graveyard, and he hid the grim violence he had pledged himself to undertake with the amused and slightly disapproving smile he reserved for his one friend, "Ah, the ubiquitous Miss Jones, I see you at least have the decorum to show some respect for the dead, instead of rushing about at your habitual gallop."

Georgina shrugged, grinning as she replied, "If what you mean by 'decorum' is that I'd rather not join them, thanks, then I suppose so."

She glanced at the tombstone, the fresh filled grave, and the single red rose in the bleak scene, and then back at Adam. Compassion filled her eyes but she understood and said nothing about them, for which he was thankful, but instead shivered down into her coat and said, "Let's get out of here, huh? I know this great club where we could get out of this miserable weather and really have a groovy time."

Adam proffered his arm, and said drily, "I fear, Miss Jones, that your definition of a good club and mine hardly resemble the same thing."

She linked her arm in his, her eyes smiling mischievously, "Oh, come on, you'd love it. I know you would if you'd just give it a chance."

They set off in the direction of the gate, and Adam replied to her cajolery, "No thank you, Miss Jones. I shall be going home after I have returned you to your flat, have my tea, entertain a call from Sir Nigel, and perhaps enjoy the rarity of a quiet moment." 'Or rather make what plans I may for your protection and the destruction of The Face,' he added in his mind.

"How boring! You might as well drop me off at my usual club instead of at home, then."

"I fear, Miss Jones, that it would be a wasted journey."

Some slight difference of inflection in his genteel drawl made her ask with more than usual suspicion in the obligatory question, "Why?"

"Because it would seem that your usual clubs are amenable to accepting a certain amount of money to prevent your entrance."

Georgina stopped, "You didn't!"

Adam felt a small smile tug at his mouth and mischief light in his dark eyes as he kept on walking; of course it wouldn't keep her out of trouble or from disreputable company, but he had acted on what he believed to be in her best interest, and - if he was honest with himself - he also liked to discomfit her as she liked to find ways to shock his sensibilities, "Such places and company are unsuitable for a man, let alone a young woman, Miss Jones."

"Mr. Adamant!" Georgina wailed in complaint as she ran to catch up with his long stride, but as she latched onto his arm her eyes sparkled with wide-eyed good nature that didn't take his action seriously.

They walked on through the graveyard, arm in arm with the only person resembling family they had. Though it was as certain as the seasons that Adam would wreak justice on The Face, he resolved just as adamantly that he would not let The Face take this moment of his life, or any other that he shared with the irrepressible Miss Georgina Jones. Not that he would ever verbally admit that, despite her noisy chatter and her inability to consider his privacy, he saw her as the younger sister he never had and the best part of this strange new world of 1967.


End file.
